Poured into snifter. Pours oily jet black with a thick brown head that sticks around. Smells of bourbon, coffee and chocolate...this beer smells better than some taste. The smell after a bit changes into some standard stout roasted malt and yeast. Head leaves a lot of lacing for a stout, beautiful. Taste is glorious; creamy and full mouthfeel, with sweet caramel, coffee and chocolate swirling around with dark roasted malts. Finish is a bit boozy but it works for such a big beer. This was my first stout, and I'd die happy if it were my last.

Poured from 12 oz. bottle into KBS snifter, bottled in 2013. Bottle stored in cellar then briefly refrigerated prior to opening. Pours a beautiful jet black and forms a two inch foamy head that's beige in color. The head ultimately settles into a thin ring around the glass.

The nose is French roast coffee and milk chocolate, quite inviting. There's also a strong roasted malt aroma, followed by a spicy presence that hints of nutmeg. The taste is quite similar to its nose, bitter mocha, sweet molasses and roasted malt, fudge and spicy (chile ancho and nutmeg).

The mouthfeel of this beer is quite pleasant, almost no carbonation present which in my opinion helps savour the beer even better.

Overall - very excited to discover this beer, its quite enjoyable and hides the 10% ABV extremely well. Its sweet yet no overwhelmingly so and all of its flavors are well balanced.

Some sort of screwy yellow code stamped on the bottle in very crude dot-matrix format - impossible to read. Grrrrr. Very dark, black, opaque. 1 inch tan, creamy, bubbly head that recedes slowly. Aroma is sweet, smoaky, chocolate. Moderately thick feel. Taste follows the aroma: sweet, roasty, bitter chocolate. Transitions from the opening taste through a sweet middle. The finish is bitter. Not boozy despite the high ABV. I can see how this would be highly rated by some, but somehow the sweet roasty fighting the bitter chololate does not work well for me. It is more like a "versus" than it is a balance. I enjoyed this beer as it stands, but it won't likely be a repeat purchase.

'01-'02: Pours perfectly black with a beautiful deep tan head. The head is slow to form and disspipates quickly however. The Aroma is chocolate, espresso, burnt toast with a bit of fruitiness that makes it seem like the burnt toast has jelly or jam on it. The aroma floods the nose and starts the salivary glands. Burnt toast flavor and a thin bitterness from the hops dominate early on switching to espresso and unsweetened black chocolate later on and a lingering, bitter finish. That's while cold. When closer to room temperature the flavors mellow with the sharp burnt and espresso bitterness become less sharp sliding under a sweeter more chocolately taste. Mouthfeel is slightly oily, but not as thick or gritty as some other imperials. One of the lighter beers of the style.

Pours an extremely dark brown to black in the glass with a thick, creamy, tan froth that, unfortunately, dissipates somewhat quickly...great lacing! The nose is VERY pretty with sweet, almost dessert like, aromas of dutch chocolate, milk chocolate, soft banana, brown sugar, light molasses, black raspberries, dark fruit, vanilla, & subtle espresso. This beer smells awesome! Sweet, but not too sweet flavors of chocolate, banana, molasses, roasted barley, & roasted coffee show through a long finish with a clear citrus/slightly pine bitter hop finish.(necessary for awesome balance) Great, creamy carbonation. Overall, this is an amazing beer that is extremely smooth...esp. for a 10% abv beer. There is a definite warmth to this beer, but I'd never guess that this is a 10% beer...again...very smooth. A must try!

o: Hard to imagine I have pasted this by all these years, given my love for imperial stouts. This is definitely for adults so kiddies beware! Black Chocolate Stout is rich, complex and very much a sipper. Drink at cellar temp.

I love my imperial stouts and I also love Brooklyn, so I had to try this one. This is an amazing sipping beer and is not for your run of the mill beer drinker. I mostly like my beer like I like my coffee, nice and dark; so this is well within my wheel house. Overall the smell is spot one and second to none for an imperial stout. The taste is also very good and gives it a feel of drinking dark chocolate. Overall I am quite pleased with this Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout and will be partaking of it through out this fall and coming winter.

We got a great beer here.
Listed in the "1001", I read that review that this recipe got Garrett Oliver his job at Brooklyn. (He had been working in a brewpub in Manhattan.) And beer history took a very big step.
Unlike many of the others in this category, Brooklyn's contribution uses no cocoa... but tastes like chocolate. You have to know lots about malts and, apparently in 1994, Garrett Oliver knew lots more than just about everyone.

I bought a 4 pack... which I no longer regret. Two years later, I just drank the last one now and it was worth holding as it clearly had improved... less edge, more smooth.

Reviewed in Roger Protz' " 300 Beers To Try Before You Die!"
MJ's 1999 edition gave this 3.5 stars of 4 and called it "the world's answer to a waring malted milk with a shot of bourbon. It achieves an astonishing black-chocolate flavour through malt alone"

2/5/17 had the vintage bottled two years ago. All the tastes are there, but not at peak. My next tasting of this will be at 18 months.

Ink black with the barest sliver of ruby at the edges. BBCS is as close to absolute black as it's possible to get... without quite getting there. The expansive crown is dark tan in color and appears sticky enough to have some staying power. There's isn't much lace, though small ragged sheets are seen.

The aroma is redolent of sweet dark roasted malt, with the usual RIS overlay of chocolate and black coffee. The former is more prominent than the latter. Hops don't make much of an olfactory splash.

My first impression of the flavor is that the alcohol is more evident than it should be. It isn't masked well at all. There's plenty of bittersweet chocolate, which is nice. It's like drinking a melted Hershey's Special Dark chocolate bar mixed with espresso and vodka. Too bad it's a little too raw and burnt/charred.

This beer doesn't have the power, the depth or the complexity of Samuel Smith's Imperial Stout or Bell's Expedition Stout. Masking the alcohol more completely would go a long way toward letting the flavor profile free to do its thing. The mouthfeel is thick and smooth. No complaints there.

I don't know if cellaring this relatively fresh Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout will soften it a little, but I'll give it a try since I have five bottles left to drink.

Pours a deep,dark black with a nice almond colored head that leaves great lacing,the aroma is very coffeeish and slightly bitter sweet.A real nice complesx beer starts out somewhat earhty and coffeish with a dried fruit flavor comin thru and a hint of dryness in the finish.Very complex,a masterpiece of a beer.

This bottle poured a dark black with only a small, tan head. The aging seems to have taken away some of the carbonation. The nose was very nice and highlighted by obviosuly chocolate hints, although subtle. The taste is where this beer makes its mark: A puff of semi-sweet chocolate off the top that turns only slightly bitter towards the end of the sip. A decadent chalky cocoa follows and the combination lingers long and pleasantly. Coffee bean undertones & roasted malts. Mouthfeel was exceptional. Although the pour revealed little carbonation, the body was lively enough to offer up some fresh mouthfeel and mix in a creaminess off the back end. I don't have a newer bottle of this beer to compare it to but this aged bottle is simply outstanding. Superb in every aspect.

Smell  This is as roasty as it gets. The malts and chocolate are super-dark, reflecting the color of the ale. I can actually pick up several types of chocolate here, a fine dark style being the most prominent. The roasted malts are burnt and lovely, showing a lot of depth in character.

Taste  This is like drinking dark chocolate coca powder. It is so dark and so chocolaty, its unbelievable. This one definitely lives up to its name.

The malts are equally as mature, complimented at the tongue with some nice fruiting that I failed to pick out at the nose. I particularly enjoy the prune and cherry mix that Im getting here.

Mouthfeel  This was not full in the mouth, but it was very big with an amazing smoothness. It will most assuredly pucker your mouth with the bitter dark chocolate character.

Drinkability  I thought about eating a Hersheys with this just for kicks, but decided to enjoy the flavors all on their own. This was incredible.

Comments  A big thanks to OldFrothingSlosh who sent me this just for the hell of it after we did a previous trade. This was an enjoyable and very unique experience for me, and I greatly appreciate the gesture.

The Brooklyn Brewery Black Chocolate Stout is an incredible beer. Here are the details.

Appearance: This stout was black with ever so slight tinges of red on the bottom of the glass. Some brown but not much. Almost pure black. There was no head on this beer and like most stouts, when you look at it from the top it looks like an espresso. There was great lacing on this beer that reminded me of swirling a wine glass.

Aroma: The aroma was wonderful. I got a nice roasted chocolate scent mixed with deep-roasted coffee. I could pick up the malt also and some nuttiness. This beer had a slight swaf of sweetness. And whoa, I could smell the 10.1% ABV on this beer.

Taste: Wow. This beer has a fantastic taste. Though this is a chocolate stout, I picked up the deep-roasted coffee first. However, as I swallow a nice cocoa flavor coates the pallete. The chocolate is not a sweet chocolate but a semi-sweet cocoa. The coffee and chocolate are very well balanced with one not overpowering the other. The beer finishes with a hint of bitterness but it's the perfect amount. This beer blends everything together in perfect harmony. This is a full-body beer with a creamy mouth feel. This beer is dangerously easy to drink at 10.1% (which is a compliment).

Overall: What a wonderful beer. I enjoy stouts and this is likely one of the best stouts I've had.

Vintage 04-05 bottling, thanks to Jeff. This baby is somewhere between 8 and 9 years old - let's see how it has held up. It pours dark as hell - black with only a slight bit of dark brown showing at the very edges. No head, literally none, even with a straight down pour. I guess that's what almost ten years in a bottle will do to you, eh? Very still and menacing in the glass, seemingly void of any carbonation.

The first glace, Black Chocolate Stout is a bit more pungent on the nostrils than I was expecting, and it actually contains a strong, almost boozy character. It's like rich, dark chocolate dipped in a booze bath. Lots of cocoa on the nose - some milky, some darker, with a touch of roasted malts on the side. Not getting much coffee and hops are probably long gone at this point.

So far, this doesn't smell so much like a Russian Imperial Stout as it does an American Imperial Stout, but maybe I'm just splitting hairs. Unfortunately some oxidation has gotten the best of this beer - or at least the aroma would tell me that. It invokes a slight sherry character, perhaps lending to the booziness, but it also has the slight smell of wet cardboard, slightly musty and stale. Hopefully it doesn't affect the taste too much.

Leading the charge of the first sip is a mound of smooth, sweet chocolate and a solid offering of boozy, dark fruit sweetness - figs, anise, and the darkest dates around. The roasty character takes a bit of a backseat, and oxidation is present from the middle to the end, again introducing both a mild sherry flavor and a bit of the "stale, wet cardboard" that is especially heavy in the aftertaste. Some sweet and dark chocolates help to balance this out, but I can't help but wonder how much better this beer would be fresh. Without carbonation, the mouth feel is pretty silky and smooth; full-bodied and pretty heavy.

It seems like this beer would age well if you could keep it from oxidizing. Hell, even slowing the oxidation down wouldn't be so bad. It was just a little too much, here, but the beer that lies underneath the oxidation seemed to be doing fine. I'd like to have this one again, fresh, just to compare. Very good stout, although there are plenty out there that I'd choose over this one.

Presentation: 355 ml bottle with freshness date printed on the bottle (best before December 2011).

Appearance: The pour is black, just one step away from being opaque, with a surprisingly small (half a finger) light brown head that settles quickly and leaves basically no lacings.

Smell: Mostly dark chocolate. Although it has less sweet aromas than many other imperial stouts, there are still some notes of blackcurrants and faint vanilla here. Gentle hops and a good deal of roasted barley finish things off.

Taste: Big flavors of dark chocolate hit the palate and stays on right to the very end of the finish. The chocolate flavors are definitely on the bitter end, leaning towards cocoa, but every now and then notes of sweeter chocolate appear as well. The taste of roasted barley is also quite immense and it blends beautifully with the chocolate. Some fruity flavors (plums?) and maybe some vanilla are to be found as well, somewhere among the chocolate and roasted barley. But still, the sweetness in this one is really restrained. From a few sips, I get a slight acidic flavor, but this might be the bitterness from the chocolate and the roasted grain that's playing a trick on me. The alcohol, although well hidden, provides a pleasant twang before the finish, which is quite bitter and contains some restrained, yet distinct, hops and long roasted flavors. Not the most complex imperial stout, but still a delightful beer with it's astonishing chocolaty character.

Mouthfeel: Quite a lot of carbonation considering the style, but thanks to a full body it manages to come out rather smooth.

Drinkability: I've had this beer quite a few times, and I'm always amazed by the fact that it's made solely from malt, hops, water and yeast, and no chocolate additives. How one can make ingredients such as these to taste this good is quite astonishing. However, although it's a rather bold and edgy imperial stout with it's emphasis primarily on chocolate and roasted flavors, it still lacks some complexity. But it's still, highly highly recommended.